


Paint Us In Peace

by Wolfy_Nixus



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Art, F/F, I hope it's enjoyed!, I really liked this, Prompt Fic, SuperSummer 2018 fic, i might write a sequel?, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 16:18:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15465297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfy_Nixus/pseuds/Wolfy_Nixus
Summary: Prompt for the SuperCat Summer 2018 thingy! Written while listening to The Piano Guys! I didn't want lyrics to impact what I was writing, but whenever Cello Wars played I tended to write faster. Take that as you will!





	Paint Us In Peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadowsinthedark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsinthedark/gifts).



> "Cat Grant has just been given her first assignment as a real reporter by her boss Perry White. Find popular painter KD and get an exclusive. KD is known for being a bit eccentric and a hell of a recluse. No one in the art scene knows much about the artist. Kara Danvers keeps the fact she's KD well hidden, or so she thought, until Cat Grant shows up asking questions. What happens when Cat finally meets KD?"

Catherine Jane Grant had to beg for this assignment. It very nearly went to Clark Kent, but she and Lois Lane fought tooth and nail for the rights to this project. Cat won her prize, and in doing so, secured her first real step towards her goal. This would be the earth upon which she builds an empire. Where she plants her seed and watches it flourish. Now all she had to do was hunt down an unknown artist who was nearly as mysterious, but just as poignant as Banksy. KD.

For nearly a year KD’s works have been appearing in galleries and museums, the middle of intersections and in front of various companies all over Metropolis. Sculptures, paintings, murals, metal work even. The first piece was a mural painted across the side of a building owned by Luthor Corp., and it had certainly garnered attention, both as a beautiful work of art, but also as a commentary on business practices in general and the Luthor’s specifically. It garnered the attention of the public and forced the company to change for the better. It ultimately wasn’t much, but it was significant enough that current employees and consumers were feeling favorably towards the changes made. Then came the statues in the parks, children playing beneath a great bird, painted in bright and complimentary colors. Unable to move it without destroying it, the city had been forced to keep it, especially after more public attention. Then paintings and more sculptures began appearing, and with the paintings came the initials. KD. Nothing more and nothing less.

Cat was sat in a nondescript sedan just outside KD’s most frequented gallery. KD favored this place, it seemed, having dropped off 30 paintings, and 12 sculptures here in the months since they’d begun their artistic assault. Cat had managed to narrow it down, there were dozens of gallery’s in Metropolis, and KD only frequented some of them, and never the high priced ones, full of pompous white people who didn’t care about what KD stood for. A painting verified to be a KD original was delivered to several group homes and were sold for the benefit of the children there. KD knew exactly what they were doing and what they wanted their art to stand for. The people of this city, all of them, not just some.

The closest any one came to finding out KD’s identity came from a group of homeless people from the tent city just outside Metropolis, they’d met KD, they claimed. Described them as beautiful, blonde and blue eyed, like an angel descended from Heaven. They were told they were exaggerating, but they insisted that KD literally descended from the sky, asked if they wanted their portraits down, and painted them. After the story was shrugged off, claimed to be the ramblings of ‘crazy losers’, a series of portraits appeared across the city, and a message within each piece.

_“Don’t doubt your own people. Embrace each other. El mayarah.”_

It was that last phrase that people freaked out over, of course. Linguists from all over attempted to translate the phrase, an unknown language, not of this earth, or if it was then it was incredibly old and ancient. The altruistic few turned to the tent city, helped as many as they could before the state ordered it destroyed, forcing hundreds away in the process, or back into the city. When that was done a new painting, sad and in dark colors dropped in front of the Daily Planet of broken temporary homes, and broken bodies. It was nothing obscene, but the message was clear and people focused once more on the message instead of the artist, at least a little.

A flash of light in Cat’s periphery caught her attention and she was sitting straight up and alert. The door for large deliveries was open, the silhouette of a person pushing a dolly illuminated by the light inside. Whatever was on that dolly was big, or maybe it was multiple pieces? But there was no truck, no vehicle at all. How did they… Cat was up and out of her vehicle immediately as the door began to shut, glad she’d gone with running shoes and comfortable jeans for this impromptu sting. The door has slammed shut, however, as she finally reaches it and she curses quietly. She paces, arms crossed, thumb nail between her teeth, listening, thinking, wondering how she can get in. If this is KD then she’s far too close to just give up. If it’s just some stranger, a late night artist, or worse a terrible burglar, then she’ll either embarrass herself or become a victim of a potential mugging or assault. Either way, she doesn’t think she could leave.

Cat hums softly, as she squats low she grabs hold of the handle, and tugging she rolls her eyes as the sliding door opens almost too easily. Burglar, KD, or stranger, whoever they are they really should have locked this if they wanted to get away with whatever they’re doing undisturbed. She opened the gap as much as she dared and quietly closed it behind her. The lights were soft, mostly to guide security when they happened to be there, than to actually illuminate the place with any significance.

As Cat made her way towards the main gallery she could hear them, a woman’s voice? Softly singing, it floated through the air gently, wrapping Cat up within its warm embrace like nothing she’d ever heard before. She followed it, mission or no mission; she somehow knew she’d follow this voice to the end, whatever that might entail. When a light flicks on in her periphery she pauses, glancing into a small side room, and as she steps in she finds herself entranced.

Cat Grant has never been an art snob. She can certainly appreciate and pay handsomely for pieces she finds that speak to a deeper part of her, but she never belittled a layman. But in all her years as a consumer of people’s creative projects, she’s never been this absorbed. This small, octagonal room was a timeline. From beginning to end and back again, so flowing and blended that it was as natural as a time-lapse lifecycle of a flower. From fire to water to earth tones, and bright pinks and greens and yellows, it was a maelstrom of life and death effortlessly strung together. Cat studied each one, and as she reached the second burst of fire she could see them, figures in the flames, born and killed by fire. She then saw the colors change, and there was new life, the subtle silhouette’s of a city surrounded by blue and then bursting with life in the next painting. In the center of the room was the final piece. Without even reading the placard, she knew this was all KD. The shape of the woman in the center of the room, perfectly sculpted, the hanging robes looking as soft as silk, and yet was hard as the marble it was carved from. The woman’s face was turned to the sky, hands held out, and palms upward as if in request to a god that wasn’t answering. Cat’s eyes traveled down the form and found the base to be jagged, rocky, the woman looking at peace despite being swallowed by an unseen but violent force.

Cat wiped her eyes as she felt tears spill down her cheeks, sniffling and frowning at herself for getting so emotional.

“What are you doing here?” Cat jumped, spinning around to see a light in her face, probably the light she’d seen that led her into this place. A headlamp, hiding the face of the woman, she was sure of it now, standing in front of her. She held a hand up to shield her eyes from the light, backing away even as the taller woman approached her, matching her step for step. “What do you want? No one should be here!”

“Look I’m sorry! I’m just—I’m looking for someone..!” The woman paused and grew quiet, letting Cat take a few more steps back, still being blinded by that damn headlamp. “I’m looking for KD.” Cat could see a hand at the woman’s side shove into her pocket, and for a moment Cat feared she had a weapon, but the hand didn’t resurface. Was she hiding? “Do you know them? Who are you? What are you doing in this gallery so late?”

The moment seemed to continue forever, but was likely only a few seconds, before Cat heard the long, slow sigh from the woman, and when the woman’s other hand reached up to shut off the light, it took Cat’s eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden dimness, but as she took in the woman in front of her, realization dawned.

“Kara?” The blonde in front of her, dressed in faded and torn jeans, white t-shirt splattered in old and new paint, hands and arms equally marked up, didn’t even look shamefaced. She smiled, a little shyly, but still, she used her hands to remove the headlamp and walked to set it down on a table near one of the empty sections of wall, a yet undone. “What are _you_ doing here? I never took you for an artist…at least not, not like this…is this, are you?” Suddenly the pieces were coming together, and Cat couldn’t possibly believe she let it go this long without realizing.

Kara Danvers, KD, artiste extraordinaire. Kara Danvers, clumsy office assistant at the beck and call of half a dozen reporters at The Daily Planet, nails trimmed neatly all the time, never any paint on them, hair always in a neat bun, accompanying her cousin Clark to various events around the city. KD was the one person she never would have suspected, and she was ashamed of that suddenly. Ashamed she never thought that Kara Danvers was always this extraordinary, more so than what she’d already decided she was. Clumsy but always getting every request correctly, every vague or haphazardly scribbled meeting or office notice she delivered on. Every time someone was stuck, she subtly provided that little push and those half dozen reporters were the best in the business on the East coast. All thanks to Sunny Kara “KD” Danvers.

“You really got one over on us, huh?” Kara had left Cat alone, climbing onto a ladder as she worked at the lighting above the paintings, carefully adjusting the angle, the intensity, the gel of the light to achieve just the right kind of atmosphere for this particular scene. “How long were you going to pull this? Lie to us?” Kara frowned at Cat, and then turned back to her work on the light.

“I wasn’t lying if no one ever asked me.” Cat crossed her arms, coming to the ladder and standing near it, eyes roving over Kara from sensible work shoes, up dirty jeans and to bulging arms as they struggled with the fixture.

“Would you have told us if we did? Does Clark know?” Kara frowned again and sighed in relief as she finally got the light just as she wanted and descended the ladder again. Cat didn’t move, so they stood nearly chest to chest, Cat having to slightly tilt her head back to look up at the younger woman.

“Clark knows all that he needs to. Besides, it doesn’t matter.” Kara smiled softly, head tilting in that way that Cat always associated with a precocious puppy. Kara stepped around her, arms brushing, and Cat tried to ignore the hitch in her own breath as she turned to follow after Kara a few steps.

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Of course it matters! Look at this! All of this! It’s-Kara it’s! I have never…it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, any of it. It’s nothing any of us have seen before.” Kara nodded, picking up a palette and mixing colors carefully as she set up her tools.

“This is going to be the last piece. It’s all one big piece…” she glanced towards the statue of the woman in the middle and smiled as if the woman were all that mattered in this life. Cat could see that longing, felt it in the work, watched it as Kara approached the woman and began to work. Cat had never seen an artist work like Kara, laser focused on her task, on the vision only Kara could see and Cat could only hope to understand or completely comprehend.

“Who is she?” Cat asked quietly, not trusting her own voice, but wanting to know, needing to know. The way Kara looked at this woman, with familiarity and yet like she couldn’t reach her if she prayed. Part of her didn’t want to share Kara, this expanded Kara, anymore than she wanted to share the Kara from 20 minutes ago, the Kara who got her coffee perfectly every time, who knew her to a T, sometimes better than she knew herself. Kara who’d gotten stuck in an elevator with her and managed to keep her calm, keep her from panicking for nearly an hour until they were finally released. Kara, the girl she’d kissed at Clark and Lois’ Christmas party on the balcony, and then nothing had changed.

No, that’s wrong. Something had changed. Because two weeks later KD’s first piece appeared. Nearly 8 months later and everything has changed. “My mother.” Kara speaks, ladder just close enough to the woman that Kara could reach. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Cat. So much I want to share with you…but I wanted to share with everyone, too. Everyone should know this; know that we can’t afford to lose ourselves by losing each other. By letting invisible lines and borders and color divide us. It’s how my people destroyed themselves, how my mother…” she sniffled and wiped her eyes with the strip of skin on her arm that wasn’t covered in paint so as not to make a mess of her face any more than it was. Cat approached the ladder and could see Kara was crying, truly crying and it was such a deep sadness, Cat could only hope she never experienced such a thing.

“I want to know you, Kara…I’ve wanted to know you, beyond KD, beyond the superficial. I want to see you. I have a feeling you’ve been able to see me for a long time now. Will you let me return the favor?” Kara sniffled, and for a moment Cat thought she’d say no.

“Let me finish the details here…and we can talk for a little bit.” Cat nodded, smiling softly at the young woman above her. “I have a little cot to nap in just there, in that corner. It’s not what you’re used to, but…” Cat nodded, making her way to the cot, chanting in her head to remind herself that a few minutes on a cot to have a heart to heart with her crush is well worth it. She lay back, head on a soft pillow that smelled just like Kara’s flowery perfume, she watched Kara work painstakingly, lovingly, on the finer details of her mother’s face. The dediCation there, the same as she showed at work, when she helped her on an article, or in her daily life, or when they’d Catch themselves on the roof thinking of new ways to make fun of Perry White’s latest ugly tie.

As Cat drifted to sleep, she could have sworn she had an angel floating over her, and sweet nothings whispered into her ear before soft lips brushed her cheek. Those people were right. There was an angel among them. That angel was hers.


End file.
